EP Vol. 2. Design Fiction

After the first EP volume on the activities of the early Italian avant-garde, the second volume in the series identifies the current fascination with fiction across art, design, and architecture. Practitioners and theorists explore this strategy by pushing the debate into both speculative and real-fictitious terrains. Newly commissioned interviews, artist projects, and essays shed light on topics such as parafiction and algorithmic ambiguity. Included in the volume is one of the final interviews to be published with novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco; a conversation with Bruce Sterling, in which the science-fiction author responds to designers who reference his writings; and design theorist Vilem Flusser’s 1966 essay 'On Fiction,' in its first English translation.

I shout "That‘s me!" Stories of Czech fanzines from the 80s till now

Published in November 2017 by PageFive, for the first time the book takes its readers through uncharted waters of the Czech fanzine scene, that is, of unofficial amateur magazines. It brings to light stories of those who fell for computer games or wrote sci-fi stories, who obsessively compiled their own metal music charts, who were driven to street demonstrations by hardcore punk music or who wanted to change the standing of women in society. And who then wrote about it freely in their magazines.

The bi-lingual publication I shout "That‘s me!" Stories of Czech fanzines from the 80s till now of over 230 pages features unique archival content and should be of interest to local as to foreign reades as well, as the fanzine culture outside of the Anglo-American scene is practically unmapped.

Lucerne—Switzerland’s poster town—has a vibrant graphic design scene, which in recent years has become known for its sophisticated posters well beyond the country’s borders. Professional colleagues are in awe of how a relatively small city can produce so many well-designed posters. Lucerne posters can be found in many exhibitions. To give one example: in 2015 alone, twenty-six of the hundred best posters from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland came from Lucerne and the surrounding area—in other words, more than a quarter of all the awardwinning works. What’s behind this? Is it coincidence or a preponderance of designers of above-average talent in a comparatively small area? The book Poster Town tracks this phenomenon with a wealth of images and texts and creates a record of Lucerne’s poster designs for posterity.

Pateř 2116

Pater is a raw science-fiction novel and futuristic design polemic, taking place in streets of Prague in a year 2115.

Bit by bit, you lose patience. You thumb through the manual angrily. Nothing. You find the contents. The modest imprint only confirms that the pages containing the key to the system’s language, necessary to overcome the programmable barrier, isn’t there. You turn on AČ, who’s trying to cut the composite tape on the AC vent.

'Are you fucking kidding me, asshole?!' AČ shrivels up in anticipation of another blow. You aim the paralyzer at him. He’s huddled in the corner, whining like a beaten dog.

'I don’t know anything. I really don’t know anything! I swear!'

Not again. 'What did we say about swearing?!' The paralyzer beam hits one of his kidneys. 'I’ll give you one more chance to tell the truth. I won’t lie, you’ll get another one afterwards, but then you’ll have no kidneys left, so think about what you’re gonna say.'

AČ’s become a crying, salivating wreck only barely reminiscent of a person. Not that he was a feast for the eyes before the radiotherapy, but this is too much.